U.S. Pat. No. 7,389,644 and No. 7,406,828 disclose CAES plant concepts with a power generation section including a combustion turbine as a prime power generation component, with a recuperator recovering the combustion turbine exhaust heat to preheat stored compressed air, withdrawn from a storage, to be expanded through a bottoming cycle expander driving an electric generator that generates the bottoming cycle additional power with additional power being generated by the air injection into combustion turbine assembly with associated power augmentation of combustion turbine. These CAES plants could be built based on existing combustion turbines.
There is significant conceptual similarity between the disclosed CAES plant concepts and CC power plants that include a combustion turbine with Heat Recovery Steam generator (HRSG) recovering the combustion turbine exhaust heat for steam generation to be expanded through the bottoming cycle power generating steam turbine.
When using renewable energy resources like wind and solar power that are not controllable, there is a need for CAES plants to store the renewable energy during off-peak hours when it is not needed and to release it when it is needed during peak hours.
There is a need to convert existing CC power plants to CAES power plants into load management CAES plants to significantly reduce cost and improve economics of CAES plants that are needed to load manage and enhance economics of renewable resources.